South Australia, Gateway to the Great Outback
before darkness set in, Nobby and I strolled
to a sandy bank of Cooper Creek. Evening
flowed over us like a gentle tide. Sitting be
side a large water hole, we watched ducks
fly in and out, and we saw an ibis. In their
going-to-roost restlessness, galahs and white
cockatoos shrieked and squeaked, making a
frightful racket in the velvet twilight.
Pilot Learns the Hard Way
Next day we set a southwesterly course.
The country beneath us deteriorated. Strzel
ecki Creek, a long arm of Cooper Creek, had
gone dead dry. For a study in total sterility,
I commend the area; it looked to me as for
bidding as the surface of the moon.
An outback friend of Nobby's, who has
roamed all over the state and the continent,
too, once said of the land we were now tra
versing, "This is not some of the worst coun
try in Australia; it is the worst."
And I could well believe it. For this region
made the most hostile desolation I'd hitherto
seen seem rather sweet and friendly. From the
air it all appeared quite flat, but Nobby said
it was actually blistered with 10-foot-high
sand mounds, or dunes.
"How do you know they're 10 feet high?"
I asked.
"Because I crash-landed down there a few
months ago," he replied.
I tightened my seat belt.
Ahead loomed the Flinders Ranges. Some
where among those mountains nestled the
Arkaroola airstrip, where I would rendezvous
with a hired car. There I'd say goodbye to
Nobby Buckley and the Cessna, and continue
my coverage on the ground.
When we got near the mountains, a blus
tery west wind bounced our little plane about
like a harried Ping-Pong ball. Nobby had
never landed at Arkaroola's new field, and he
didn't want to try it this windy day. The air
strip pressed against a bluff; experience told
Nobby the downdraft would be tricky, if not
downright dangerous. He decided to use the
field at Balcanoona, 14 miles away.
Even there, as we were about to land, a
sudden crosswind hit us so hard it fouled our
approach. We had to go around again. Safely
down, Nobby said, "Well, Howell, we've been
dicing with death for nearly a fortnight, and
today we could have lost the game."
Piloting myself now in the hired car that
had followed us to Balcanoona, I recalled
Nobby's prediction about not needing any
money on our trip. Except for one lunch, I
hadn't been able to spend a cent for food or
lodging, thanks to the warm hospitality re
ceived everywhere in the outback.
I drove across the Flinders Ranges to the
open-cut mines at Leigh Creek, which provide
coal for the big power plant at Port Augusta.
This in turn supplies electricity for machinery
digging the coal, and also furnishes the cur
rent for much of South Australia.
Then I headed back into the mountains to
spend the night at the living ghost town of
Blinman. At an elevation of 2,020 feet, it has
the highest post office in the state. It also has
the quietest hotel of my acquaintance in all of
Australia. Usually, at day's end you can hear
a country pub's barroom babel a block away.
Not so here.
Deferentially, I entered to ask for a room,
feeling that I should whisper. There were
men drinking beer all right, but they spoke in
the reverent tones of pallbearers. Silently the
proprietress showed me upstairs to my room,
and I settled into the 19th century. Blinman,
I decided, must still be deep in mourning for
the copper mine that had given the little town
its original reason for being here.
Whyalla: Dynamic War Baby
Early morning. Cold. Pungent smell of
cigarette smoke. A man coughs. A crow caws.
I crawl out from under six blankets, not
doubting for one frigid minute that Blinman
has the highest post office. And this is a fine
spring day in November, the equivalent of
May in the Northern Hemisphere.
Southward through the Flinders Ranges I
traveled to Port Augusta, then rolled out onto
Eyre Peninsula, that flat triangular pendant
on South Australia's coast. I soon came to
Whyalla and stopped to spend a day in the
huge steelworks and the nation's largest ship
building yards. These two heavy industries,
sparked by World War II, got going here in
1941 with the first tapping of a blast furnace
and the first launching-a 750-ton patrol
vessel. Since then fifty vessels, including five
60,500-ton bulk carriers, have gone down the
Whyalla slipways. And steel production has
reached 1,100,000 tons a year (pages 462-3).
Driving out of Whyalla, I noticed a tire
shop named Beaurepaire. I was still chuck
ling over this name some minutes later when
- flub, flub, flub, flub-my right rear tire
469